Máximo and Florencia Kirchner “participated in the aforementioned businesses as a link to government”, Judge Julián Ercolini alleges. He claims, too, that Máximo and Martín Báez “intervened directly in multiple activities needed to carry out the plan”.

Por Jayson McNamara

Yesterday 03:53 PM

Por James Grainger

Tuesday 22 May, 2018

Por Jayson McNamara

A federal court yesterday indicted former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner for alleged money laundering, her fifth indictment to date.

Her children, Máximo and Florencia Kirchner, were also indicted, as were the Kirchner couple’s alleged frontman, Lázaro Báez, and his eldest son Martín.

Federal Judge Julián Ercolini, in his ruling, considered the Kirchner and Báez children to be co-perpetrators of the crime of money laundering.

He also placed embargoes on the accused parties, which range from 750 to 800 million pesos. This is the same amount of money that Lázaro Báez is believed to have received in public works contracts during former presidents Néstor and Cristina Kirchners’ time in office, funds which allegedly flowed back in the form of kick-backs through the Kirchner family hotel business.

Among those included in the indictment were Romina Mercado, the ex president’s niece; the Kirchner family accountant, Víctor Manzanares; and businessman Osvaldo “Bochi” Sanfelice.

In his ruling, Ercolini signals out CFK and Lázaro Báez as “articulators” of the financial manoeuvres currently being investigated. “They operated behind businesses in which they had a share and, in some case, personally carried out activities”, he wrote.

He pointed to Báez, saying “his behaviour manifested above all in the creation and direction of a wide business conglomerate”; while “Fernández (de Kirchner) was the owner of Hotesur SA and the hostel Las Dunas with which she would come to justify having obtained some funds which stemmed from the defraudation of the State”.

THE KIDS, PART OF THE SCHEME

The ruling, which was made public yesterday, alleged that CFK’s children Máximo and Florencia, as well as Martín Báez, the eldest son of Lázaro, operated “in the same way” as their respective parents.

Máximo and Florencia “participated in the aforementioned businesses as a link to government”, Ercolini alleges. He claims, too, that Máximo and Martín “intervened directly in multiple activities needed to carry out the plan”.

The Kirchner children, like their parents, “may have extracted money from Hotesur SA without complying with the formalities established by Law", Ercolini claims.